As we begin this special session on oil taxes, can we agree on
just this one thing: the oil industry advocates for Alaskans
in much the same way Col. Sanders advocated for chickens?

I seek this common ground
in the turbulence of the pervasive, expensive, and overwrought
ad campaign by the oil industry. Industry advocates continue
their blitz of focus-group-honed messages that mislead, misguide,
mischaracterize, miscast, misapply, misreckon, and misstate
in an effort to get the legislature to again misfire on oil
taxes.

I offer as evidence the oil
industry's 'PFD Test' newspaper ad and mailer, the "Got
Milked" newspaper ad, and the 'Jaws 5' newspaper ad. Crafting
a new oil tax, the advocates say, will harm future permanent
fund dividends, squeeze more out of poor ol' Bessie so bureaucrats
can get a milk mustache, and lead to a shark feeding frenzy
with Alaskans being the great whites.

I'm sure extensive and expensive
polling identified these touch-button issues for the oil industry
and focus groups vetted and honed the PFD/milked/shark messages
that most effectively resonate with Alaskans. But it's too bad
the polling and focus groups focus simply on message instead
of, as Stephen Colbert might say, the "truthiness"
of the messages.

Let's take these three scare
messages from the oil industry in order and really test their
truthiness. First, the 'PFD threat' ad: any message that suggests
your PFD is threatened by this special session on oil taxes
is baloney, piled high and served without mustard or mayo. In
fact, the Alaska legislature has a history that demonstrates
we've always inflation-proofed the corpus of the permanent fund,
even though we're not constitutionally compelled to do so, and
we've often deposited additional dollars into the corpus of
the fund beyond what we're constitutionally compelled to do
instead of going on a spending spree.

The inflation proofing and
those other large appropriations to our permanent fund account
for more than $1,000 of the $1,654 in this year's PFD checks.
Instead of spending all the extra dollars, we used a lot of
'em to protect our future. These extraordinary appropriations
to the permanent fund absolutely did not fatten government but
did fatten your PFD and the permanent fund. I'd suggest we need
to continue to protect our future by receiving a fair share
for oil we own so we can continue to grow our fund and our
future.

The 'milked' ad has Bessie
the cow astraddle the pipeline. Bessie's udder is attached to
the bottom of the pipeline and dollars are being milked from
Bessie's pipeline udder into a "Big Bucket o'Bureaucracy".
This 'milked' ad may be clever enough to win awards from marketing
cognoscenti but that doesn't mean it should capture our
hearts and minds.

To go with that Bessie visual,
the ad narrative alleges Alaska wants to "milk more taxes"
out of oil production just so state government can have more
money to spend. The ad continues the milked theme saying: it's
time to get Alaska "moo-ving" toward a sustainable
future by letting industry get a fair share for their investments.

If they can stretch a metaphor,
so can I--this ad is udderly misleading. First, let's remember
that last session we set aside a billion bucks to forward fund
education and sent $50 million back to the constitutional budget
reserve. That billion plus did not go to bureaucrats and that,
of course, doesn't comport with the big bucket o'bureaucracy
vision the oil industry is spreading. Instead it was a billion
dollars that didn't grow the bureaucracy but will maintain the
essential service of education and will add to our rainy day
fund that we've drawn down over past years.

Finally, the third ad: the
shark (that being an over-the-top depiction of us) taking bites
out of the pipeline. This one really got Daniel Johnston (a
world-renowned expert on oil and gas taxes who has worked for
oil companies and taxing regimes almost everywhere) in high
dudgeon during his testimony to legislators yesterday. He noted
the ad with the shark chewing on the oil pipeline makes it seem
like oil companies will scurry to holes in the reefs while Alaska
is out a huntin' (actually this colorful language is mine but
that's what he meant). Don't believe it, he added (those are
his words).

A bit later, Mr. Johnston
said Russia on a good day is 50 times worse than Alaska on a
bad day when it comes to oil policies and oil companies still
invest in Russia. I'd add to his observation that other regimes
have government take rates far higher than Alaska; they sometimes
shoot at oil company workers; they sometimes kidnap field workers,
and have been known to nationalize oil company investments.

So, who you going to believe,
multi-national oil companies (whose economies are larger than
most nations) that characterize us as sharks, or the more angel
fish portrayal of oil tax experts?

Each time I see these three
ads, I have to remember: the enemy is not corrosion of the permanent
fund, the enemy is not bureaucrats at Bessie's udder, the enemy
is not sharks at the pipeline, the enemy instead is b.s.

About: Senator Kim Elton (D)
is a member of the Alaska Legislature representing Juneau.